Slow Photography

This series of portraits was produced in a moment of my life and my career when I felt the need for a radical change of direction in my photographic practice, and repair or at least reduce the sense of impermanence that the digital workflow had accustomed me to. First I decided to impose strong speed limits to myself: I used a wooden 4x5 field camera, loaded with 3 ASA direct positive paper. My choice of working with paper instead of negative film sheets was dictated mainly by a desire to create a finished, tangible image straight in-camera, an image I could hand develop in the simplest and most organic possible way: on location, in a small tray, using locally produced coffee as my developing agent.